Last Year

Two events made September 1st a memorable day for Jesse Cullum. First, he lost a pair of Oakley sunglasses. Second, he saved the life of President Ulysses S. Grant.It's the near future, and the technology exists to open doorways into the past--but not our past, not exactly. Each "past" is effectively an alternate world, identical to ours but only up to the date on which we access it. And a given "past" can only be reached once. After a passageway is open, it's the only road to that particular past; once closed, it can't be reopened.A passageway has been opened to a version of late 19th-century Ohio. It's been in operation for most of a decade, but it's no secret, on either side of time. A small city has grown up around it to entertain visitors from our time, and many locals earn a good living catering to them. But like all such operations, it has a shelf life; as the "natives" become more sophisticated, their version of the "past" grows less attractive as a destination.Jesse Cullum is a native. And he knows the passageway will be closing soon. He's fallen in love with a woman from our time, and he means to follow her back--no matter whose secrets he has to expose in order to do it.

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This is a very exciting time travel yarn. It doesn't have oodles of physics mumbo jumbo: Wilson simply tells you a good story. For fans of the film--and now the HBO series--there's a WestWorld flavor to the book, with tourists from the 21st Century vacationing in 1876. The main character/narrator comes across as a sort-of 1870's Jack Reacher, and there's even a throwaway line about "the works of Lee Child." Entertaining and well written.